Battle of the Maureens
by moonswirl
Summary: Gleekathon, day 1324: Tina and Brittany have an idea for a special vlog entry, but first they need to sell it to everyone, so they'll believe it's real. - Rent series


_Started my daily ficlets to make the hiatus pass, then decided to keep going with a 2nd cycle, and then a 3rd, 4th, etc through 63rd cycle. Now cycle 64!_

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**"Battle of the Maureens"  
Tina & Brittany; Mercedes, New Directions & co  
Project No Day But Today series  
_(all series now listed under the communities tab in my profile)_  
**

Tina had a plan… sort of a plan… she was getting there. She wanted to use this opportunity, having the vlog there to help put her out there for more people to see, and she was willing to search out a way to draw people's attention. She wasn't going to get this done on her own though and, if she had to pick a partner in crime for this, someone who would be right on the same page, she knew exactly who to turn to.

When she'd gone to Brittany, saying she wanted to do something for the vlog, the blonde was on board from the start, and they began to plot out their idea.

"We should just fool everybody," Brittany had suggested. "Even the rest of the group."

"That could work," Tina slowly nodded. "What are we fooling them about?" Brittany had been stumped. They had thought for some time before Tina smiled and sat up. "What if we pretended we were in a fight?" Brittany looked intrigued. "We're sharing Maureen, we could have gotten into some argument about who gets to sing which parts, something like that?"

"But we're only pretending, right?" Brittany checked.

"Of course we are," Tina promised with a smirk.

"Cool," Brittany nodded.

"Whatever we say though, we both know it's part of the act, right? We're not really mad at each other, and we're both fine," Tina had to make clear.

"Yeah," Brittany confirmed. "You can totally slap me if the moment comes."

"What? I'm not going to hit you," Tina shook her head.

"Why not? It'll help to convince them we're really mad, even if we're not."

"I guess we can. I have to warn you though, sometimes I can get a bit carried away," Tina admitted.

They had discussed it some more, the better to be ready to go 'into character' the next day at school. Tina had been at her locker with Mercedes when Brittany strolled up to her.

"Hey, Tina, I wanted to give you this," she handed her a sheet.

"What's this?" Tina frowned.

"It's paper?" Brittany shrugged.

"It's a list of the numbers we're doing," Tina quickly scanned it. "Wait, I'm supposed to do this one."

"Yeah, well, I was going through the script, and I decided it would be a much better number if I performed it instead of you. I'm pretty sure the audience will believe it more coming from me."

"Excuse me, are you serious?" Mercedes cut in, but Tina stopped her.

"I've got this," she assured her, stepping up to Brittany. "We are not changing the numbers. My numbers are mine, and yours are yours."

"Yeah, but this is going to be the new list, once I talk to Rachel and Puck about it. Don't worry, I didn't take them all away, you've still got these," she pointed to some points of the list.

"Maureen isn't even in… Brittany, those are background… You can't have Maureen all to yourself."

"But I'm so much better at it," Brittany shrugged. When Tina slapped her, she was just glad there weren't too many people to look at them yet, or they might have seen how nervous she was about it. She didn't want to hurt Brittany.

If no one had really been paying attention, the sound of the slap had gone and pulled every last pair of eyes in the hall toward them. They had an audience now.

"Ow! Why'd you do that for?" Brittany asked, 'shocked,' as she touched her cheek.

"Tina, what are you doing?" Mercedes looked like she wasn't sure whether she should be holding the other girl back or not.

"Taking care of business, that's all. You are not taking those numbers from me, Britt."

"Yeah, well we'll see about that," Brittany squinted at her. "Mercedes, you and I are going to have some new numbers to work on soon."

"Me? Wh…"

"You're a Joanne, that makes us girlfriends."

"Oh hell…"

"You've already got your Joanne, now leave me mine," Tina stood in front of Mercedes, placing herself in Brittany's way.

"Look, whatever you two got going on, leave me out of it, okay?" Mercedes had left the two of them there.

"I'm telling Mr. Schue if you don't back off," Tina warned.

"It's not his musical," Brittany pointed out. "I'll go to Rachel. And Puck."

They had stomped off in opposite directions after that. For the rest of the day it seemed they couldn't go anywhere without people watching them, especially those in their cast and crew. They couldn't step out of character at any time, so it wasn't until after school that they got a chance to regroup, at Tina's house.

"That was awesome," Brittany laughed as she came in.

"How's your cheek?" Tina asked awkwardly.

"Oh it's fine," Brittany shrugged. "So what do we do now?"

"Well, at some point Rachel or Puck or both of them, probably just Rachel, will want to pull us in and resolve this. When she does, we can twist this in a way where she'll end up deciding to put this to the vlog audience. And then we're in."

"So we have to keep being mad at each other until then?" Brittany asked.

"I guess so."

"I'm not really mad though. I'm glad we're sharing Maureen, it's like two different sides of the coin, right?"

"Right," Tina smiled.

"Oh, when we 'make up,' we can do a number in Glee Club. That's what usually happens anyway."

Tina had ended up taking the time, while they were together anyway, to help Brittany with her homework. This had meant cell phones going off, and it wasn't until they turned them back on that they saw they both had a voicemail waiting from one of their co-directors.

"Rachel, too?" Tina asked, and Brittany nodded. They had checked the message at the same time, and the reaction was much the same.

"Woah…"

"She sounds pissed."

"Did she asked to see you, too?" Brittany asked.

"Yeah, like right away."

"This is worse than the principal's office…"

THE END

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******A/N: This is a one-shot ficlet, which means that signing up for story alert will not bring you any alerts.  
****In the event of a sequel, the story will be separate from this one. And as chapter stories go, they are  
************always clearly indicated as such [ex: "Days 204-210" in the summary] Thank you!**


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